


dear rindy,

by swenfoxx



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9597878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swenfoxx/pseuds/swenfoxx
Summary: Carol pours her heart out to Rindy, who is reading it after 17 years.*please, if anything about suicide/suicide letters trigger you, don't read this*





	

Dear Rindy,

  
My name is Carol Aird. I always thought it was a beautiful name. Until I chose yours. Did you know it means you are generally warmhearted? I could often see that in you through your grown up years. My mind can’t focus on details of the past years right now. I remember a unique thing about you: you would always leave your hairbrush under my pillow. Everyday, before you went to school. I knew it meant you wanted me to admire your doing, exactly like I taught you to. You wanted my approval. That, my dear, I, myself, never got of my own.

  
I am about to tell you the most beautiful, heartbreaking, breathtaking and tragic story of my own. Don’t be sad, dear Rindy. The only thing that brings tears to my eyes at this right moment is the thought of you reading this letter. I am so sorry I will not be there to tell you from my own voice and tone. I hope you remember my voice. And if you do, please, read this letter as if you heard me reading your bedtime story.

  
It has now been 5 years I last saw her eyes. Closed, in the most peaceful and silent sleep. It was about 7am when I left the hotel room, knowing if I stayed there any longer, I would not have the courage and will to leave. After that one morning, when I wrote her a letter, I currently asked myself: what is enough? I spent days lying in bed, awake to the thought that Therese was not aware of everything she meant.

  
People change, they said. I always believed they did. After a lifetime of looking yourself in the mirror to the peculiar sentiment that you were not what you wanted to be, though, I thought changes were impractical. Until I saw her eyes. Spherical and small, the colour brown. It brings the same smile I gave her that one day just to think about those eyes. Therese, was my angel’s name.

  
Therese was small. Not yet a grown up woman, I would say at that time. But what exactly makes you a grown up? Wasn’t it to achieve your dream job, get married to a good man, have kids of your own, to know how to cook and be a good woman? Therese was a grown up woman, though. She had her bravery and courage. She was not afraid to scream in the middle of people that she loved me. She was not afraid to hold my hand under the table or kiss me in the middle of the street. Therese knew how to capture a moment. And she made her way into my heart.

  
I hope that, when you get this letter, things will be different. You will not have to hide your feelings because the world around you is too afraid of the change they might see. I hope you will read this and not be ashamed of your mother because she loved.

  
When I was young, I did not know what love was. As I was around your age, I associated love to the thought of my own mother and father. To the thought of a successful marriage and a family tree. When you were born, I thought love was the need I had to see you happy and healthy. When I met Therese, love was the smell of coffee. Warm sheets on hotel bedrooms. Dancing to old records. Putting lipstick on. Warm water running down your chest. Laughing until you cry, crying until you laugh. The realization that you don’t know everything. The sentiment that you want to. Long car drives and kissing on every stop by – love was everything. Love was every and anywhere.

  
Therese made me believe the true love story books my mother read me when I was young. I did not lose that feeling when I left those eyes. I now imagine you are wondering why I am writing this letter to you, not Therese. You shall now know, my dear Rindy, Therese and I were obligated to stay apart so that I could have you. I know, deep down, Therese forgave me years ago. She knew I could not fight anymore. She knew I was too weak.

  
But I never felt as if I was a good mother to you, my dear. The feeling I hold back is that you never really knew me. I was denied, prohibited of being myself when I left Therese behind to the privilege of not losing you. Don’t ever think you were less important than that. But how could I ever teach you how to be someone if I, myself, did not own my actions and essence?

  
Each and every one of us has a weakness. Like being afraid of highways or deep seas. You never know when you’re drown enough to never make your way back to land. You never know anything, dear Rindy, even if you wish you did. I wish I had never left Therese. And then, one day, when the world stopped fighting me because of who I loved, I would have you to know the real Carol I was. I feel like I am less of that everyday.

  
At its most heartbreaking meaning, I am so, so, so sorry. Don’t ever doubt the deepness of my love for you, dear.

  
With my whole heart,  
Carol Aird.

   


P.S.: Don’t, at any circumstances, think of me as a brave person. In the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.


End file.
